Thanks! It was quite a puzzle…
Additionally, if you check the picture, the cables never touch each other and do never run parallel, except for the NAC’s Burndy and Snaic, of course.
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Serious speaker cable artistry going on above, but in my own setup I prefer to lose the excess with 2 or 3 loose coils. This may add a small amount of inductance, making the cable appear slightly longer to the amp - which may explain why I prefer it. The PE ‘lifters’ are a recent introduction and even though I secretly wished they’d be totally without effect (the damned engineer in me) I now stare at them in disbelief.
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I’ve had the same thoughts - wouldn’t decoupled connectors need to be supported in some way to stop the decoupled plugs from permanent stress from the cable hanging free?
It’s hard enough doing A/Bs for components/cables I find sometimes, let alone fiddling with different methods of cable dressing when access to the equipment is not as good as you’d like or plain tricky!
I think it’s more down to minimising stress within the cables themselves. And perhaps also avoiding microphonics feeding back into the cable. This may be why any touching of the cables or securing to anything usually sounds worse. A useful thing to ponder: if it sounded better then very likely Naim would have already adopted it. So if they haven’t it’s worth asking why not (hint: the answer is usually because it sounds worse).
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I agree Z ing the cable can look very pretty, but I coil as it can be kept tidier and constrained and less likely to run into radio pick up. I like to try and keep my NACA5 coil off the ground… but if I had wooden suspended floors this would probably be less important.
There was a myth sometime back that coiling added inductance, but as any electrical engineer knows that is nonsense as the plus and minus runs (the twin cable of NACA5) cancel any inductance out.
With Burndy and SNAIC the aim is to keep the physical area between the two cables as small as possible whilst being preferably untouching…
this is to reduce the effective coupled inductive ground loop area which minimises any induced voltage from background electrical field into the cables… which can add to the noise floor.
An area I am religious about, is the free hanging of interconnects… this seems to really affect performance.
Oh yes keep speaker cables and mains cables apart and not touching where possible. If you need to cross try and right angles.
Keep Ethernet cables separated from mains cables, and obviously interconnects.
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Pretty and useful, if not touching the floor, specially when hoovering is needed 
Obviously the positive results aren’t due to less mechanical stress, more certainly to vibration not feeding back into the cable, as Richard noted.
In my case, keeping cables gently suspended on foam rings allows to keep them in a wanted configuration. Furthermore it makes moving the rack a lot less hazardous, which I do once in a while for dust cleaning (the rack is on industrial ball bearings, pretty small but highly efficient considering the rack’s huge wheigh).
Btw, I tried both configurations when I installed the NAP500DR (the NAP was already ran in). Didn’t make any noticeable difference. I kept the more cleaning friendly configuration.
Great cable seperation set up. What do the speaker cable hang on as i cant see from the picture, it looks as if theyre floating in mid air.
If you read between the lines, I think that Richard is saying that even foam separators may be detrimental to SQ, otherwise you’d see Naim using them all the time? On the few occasions I’ve tried using them I found that none were better.
They’re definitely best avoided if possible. But I realise that for many, an ideal installation just isn’t possible due to domestic arrangements, so i could see how maybe they would be a kind of half-way house, or lesser of two evils.
Move the boxes left or right; forwards or back on the rack.
Get another rack shelf.
Cutting a hiline not a good idea.
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You can hang it from hooks and loop with fishing nylon to avoid touching, this is my Superlumina interconnect. Hangs free and no touching - I promise 
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Thanks for the advice gents
Have had a play and am now settled with what I believe is the optimum position
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Never knew this, I was actually thinking of setting up foam-brackets to keep the SNAIC close to the Burndy cables but without actually touching each other, now that I read this I will hold on that…
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